An economically depressed region on the southwestern end of
the Luzon peninsula, the Bicol River Basin manifests almost
classic characteristics of marginal areas in developing
countries. The Basin's marginality is owed in part to its
physical isolation from Manila and other regions of the
Philippines and to a physical environment that is hostile to
productive activity for much of the year. Income is low and
inequitably distributed. Production and marketing technologies
are inefficient compared to the rest of the Philippines and other
Asian countries. Infrastructure and capital are scarce and local
government institutions are weak and ineffective. High rates of
population growth prevent appreciable increases in standards of
living even in developing sections of the Basin, and in much of
Bicol the land-tenure arrangements constrain increased
agricultural production and more equitable distribution of
income, Poverty and the lack of modern sanitation facilities
perpetuate widespread health and nutrition problems.

Background and Conditions

The Basin is a sub-area of the Bicol Region consisting of two
provinces-Camarines Sur and Albay-with 700,000 acres of land,
about half of which are arable, and nearly 1.8 million people.
(See Fig. 1.) For decades, the Bicol River Basin has experienced
high levels of rural poverty. The predominantly subsistence
agricultural economy has created chronic underemployment and
serious malnutrition among the population and encouraged
relatively high rates of migration. In 1971, over 80 per cent of
the population had incomes below the national poverty level. By
1975, nearly 90 per cent of the Basin's families had annual
incomes below the poverty threshold and nearly 65 per cent had
incomes of less than half of the poverty mark, classifying them
as the "poorest of the poor" (Table 1). About 28 per
cent of the labour force is either unemployed or seriously
underemployed, and non-agricultural job opportunities in the
Basin's towns and villages are limited. Income levels of the
Bicol River Basin's population are not only low, but income and
wealth are inequitably distributed. Ten per cent of the
households in the Basin receive 43 per cent of the total income,
and the poorer 50 per cent of the population receives only 13 per
cent of income. The poorer half lives on about US$45 per capita a
year, only enough to buy rice, occasionally some fish, and the
barest necessities of life.

Standards of living in the Basin are far below those of the
Philippines. Although outright starvation is not prevalent in the
area, 80 per cent of pre-school children suffer from serious
malnutrition. A majority of the population is inflicted with
waterborne enteric diseases and intestinal parasitism, resulting
from contaminated water supplies and poor environmental
sanitation. Nearly 73 of every 1,000 infants born in the Bicol
River Basin die during their first year, primarily of pneumonia,
gastro-enteritis, and bronchitis. There is only one physician for
every 4,600 people and most of the doctors are located in larger
towns, inaccessible to rural people. Surveys estimate that no
more than one-quarter of all women living in the Basin have ever
visited a health clinic, hospital, or family planning centre;
most rural families seek assistance from healers, or from
midwives during pregnancy. Housing conditions outside of the
larger towns are also poor. In rural areas homes are built of
scrapwood and nipa, with grass roofs and bamboo or dirt floors.
Less than one-third of the Basin's households have adequate water
supplies or sanitary toilets. Sounder structures, more typical of
the towns, are scattered in rural barangays, but the overwhelming
majority of houses throughout the Basin are constructed of weak
building materials and are highly susceptible to fire, flooding,
or destruction during typhoons. Few homes are served by piped
water or electricity; in the vast majority kerosene or wood is
used for lighting and cooking.

The population growth rate of 3.3 per cent a year results in a
high dependency ratio-nearly half of the population is under 14
years old-and more than one per cent of the population migrates
out of the Basin each year. Most migrants are younger, more
productive people seeking job opportunities in larger towns
outside the Basin, and usually in metropolitan Manila. The Bicol
Region, of which the Basin is a part, has had the lowest net
domestic product (NDP) in the Philippines over the past decade;
it declined in real terms by an average of 1.5 per cent between
1972 and 1974, at a time when the national average was growing by
nearly 4 per cent. The Bicol Region in the early 1970s had the
lowest share of employment and production among all regions in
the Philippines as well as the lowest proportion of modern
manufacturing establishments to population in the country.
Indeed, the only industrial capacity in the Basin takes the form
of small, family-owned agro-processing and cottage industries.
Nearly all manufactured goods sold in Bicol are imported from
Manita.

Development Problems

Ironically, most Bicolanos live in poverty in a land of great
natural beauty and abundant natural resources (Fig. 2). Properly
irrigated and cultivated, the Basin's rich alluvial soil could
produce enough rice to sustain an additional 8 million people.
Production of corn, abaca, sugar, coconuts, and vegetables is
only a fraction of the Basin's potential under favourable
conditions. The Bicol also has a wealth of untapped mineral
resources-about 30 per cent of the marble deposits, 75 per cent
of the perlite and about 20 per cent of the coal reserves of the
Philippines. The Tiwi geothermal plant, located on the Basin's
northeastern border, will soon generate substantial amounts of
relatively cheap energy.

But as a regional economy, the Bicol River Basin currently is
poorly equipped for increased productivity and widespread
development. Through much of the year the Basin is battered by
frequent typhoons, bringing high winds and heavy rains. The
perennial flooding destroys crops and homes, pushes saline water
into interior rice fields and causes widespread silting and
erosion. The area is physically isolated from the rest of the
Philippines during the worst of the typhoon season and poorly
linked to other regions or to Manila even during good weather. A
single paved highway that weaves tortuously through the mountains
of central Luzon connects Bicol to Manila. During the typhoon
season even this link becomes tenuous as sections of the road are
washed out and collapse down the sides of steep mountains. Daily
flights to and from Manila, buses, and one railway provide
limited capacity for travel or interregional communications, and
small ports in coastal villages provide limited access for
inter-island trade. Regional transportation and communications
are not much better, limiting travel and marketing, and leaving
the Basin's settlement system a scattering of relatively isolated
and poorly integrated clusters of villages.

Nor are current land-tenure arrangements conducive to
increasing family incomes Farmholdings are small and fragmented.
From a third to half of ail rice and corn farmers work as tenants
or landless labourers, and farm productivity is nearly 10 per
cent lower than that of the Philippines. Owners of large landed
estates have reinvested little of their profits in the Basin over
the years, and agricultural technology on both large and small
farms is primitive, Manpower and draught animals provide the bulk
of agricultural labour. Relatively few milling or processing
facilities have been established, marketing networks in rural
areas are poor, and storage capacity is limited. Because
productivity and income are so low, both tenants and small
landowners are continuously in debt. Whatever small surpluses
they accumulate are quickly spent on baptisms, weddings,
funerals, children's schooling, and the annual fiesta, and on
repaying loans. Only about half of the Basin's 100,000 hectares
of potentially irrigable ricelands are irrigated; nearly 50,000
hectares of prime agricultural land is flooded during the typhoon
season and that located adjacent to the Bicol River suffers from
saline intrusion.

Because of its large size, rich potential, and severe poverty,
both the national government and international assistance
agencies have taken a strong interest in the Basin's development.
The Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP) was established
by executive order in 1973 and strengthened by presidential
decree in 1976. The programme seeks to promote development of
agriculture, natural resources, infrastructure, social services,
and private sector investment through integrated rural
development; to provide comprehensive but decentralized planning
and management of programmes and projects; and to combine
national with local resources in attaining regional development
goals.

The BRBDP and three other regional development programmes come
under the jurisdiction of the National Council on Integrated Area
Development (NCIAD), which was recently placed in the Office of
the President. The Minister of Public Works serves as
co-ordinator for BRBDP and regional directors of national
ministries and agencies operating within the Basin; the governors
of the participating provinces and the BRBDP programme director
form the Bicol River Basin Coordinating Committee (BRBC). A
council with representatives from private business, farmers, and
religious groups, the media, and civic and youth organizations
advises the programme. To facilitate local planning and programme
implementation, the Basin is divided into Integrated Development
Areas (IDAs), each with a development team headed by a municipal
mayor, and consisting of local government officilis, community
leaders, and technical personnel from national ministries and
line agencies working in the Basin. These area development teams
are assisted with planning and technical tasks by BRBDP and line
agency professional staff (Fig. 3).

Development planning, technical studies and project design
have been funded in part by grants and loans from the US Agency
for International Development in amounts about equal to those
provided by the Government of the Philippines. Thus far, three
major capital construction projects in water resources
development and secondary and feeder roads are underway and one
is in the design stage. Comprehensive studies of water resources,
land classification and mapping, intermodal transport,
hydrometeorology, and others have been completed. Data collection
and feasibility studies for agricultural education, health,
nutrition, and population planning, crop production, and compact
farm projects are in progress, as is a comprehensive
socio-economic survey that will be updated every three years. An
agribusiness reconnaissance survey, pre-feasibility studies, and
rural industry analyses have recently been initiated.

Future Development Plans

Early success with regional planning and development in the
Basin has attracted the attention of other assistance
organizations. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB),
and the governments of Germany and Japan have expressed interest
in assisting with various projects identified in the Bicol
Comprehensive Plan for 1978 - 1987. Over the next decade
extensive physical infrastructure, agricultural production,
agribusiness, small-scale manufacturing, and social services
projects are planned for the Basin (Table 2), some of which were
included in proposals presented to the World Bank Consultative
Group meetings in Japan in 1978. A second farm-to-market road
construction programme, estimated to cost more than US$40
million, has been identified. The World Bank and the Japanese
government are now funding some road projects and the ADB is
financing rehabilitation of the railroad from Manila to Bicol. In
addition, the ADB has expressed willingness to consider proposals
for loans to supplement government irrigation and agricultural
activities in several IDAs. Germany and Japan have sent
representatives to investigate possible investments, particularly
in the industrial IDA. A World Bank loan is proposed for
upgrading the quality and expanding the facilities of local
agricultural colleges. Moreover, both the World Bank and ADB may
assist with projects to upgrade smaller ports in the Basin,
extend and improve domestic water supplies, and contribute to
agribusiness, fisheries development, and rural industry studies.
USAID is expected to continue providing financial support for
planning and project preparation, capital projects in some IDAs,
an integrated project for health, nutrition, and population, and
for technical assistance to augment the BRBDP's growing staff of
trained planners, technicians, and administrators.

Thus, the Basin was chosen as the site for the first in a
series of pilot projects for integrated spatial analysis, not
only because of its marginality and high levels of poverty, but
also because a regional planning and development agency-the Bicol
River Basin Development Program-was willing to undertake the
study, and because of the relatively good data base found in the
Philippines. Highly trained local manpower was available and
capable of implementing the project successfully. The interest of
USAID's Philippine Mission and the co-operation of the Philippine
government in providing support were also strong considerations
in selection.

The 16-month project was designed in co-operation with
international consultants and implemented by the Center for
Policy and Development Studies (CPDS) at the University of the
Philippines at Los Baņos through a contract with BRBDP. CPDS
maintained a field office in Bicol during the data-collection
phases of the project and moved the staff to Manila and Los
Baņos for the analysis and planning stages.

Indigenous design and implementation of the project, as
opposed to implementation by foreign consultants, was important
for two reasons. First, although the Bicol had a relatively good
data base, much of the crucial information was not expected to be
available in the forms needed, and the knowledge and experience
of local planners would be essential for designing realistic
surveys and interpreting results. Second, the planning process
was to be institutionalized in the Bicol River Basin Development
Program, requiring that its staff and consultants be intimately
involved in the entire study. Project design assistance,
technical aid in selecting and adapting methodology, review and
evaluation of working papers and the final report, and assistance
with training were provided by international consultants, who
also monitored and evaluated the project. These consultants were
available at regular intervals during the project, but did not
reside fulltime in the Philippines. Final responsibility for all
phases, and for completion of the project, was vested in the
Philippine staff.